Authors: J.D. Rhoades
She stood for a moment in the living room door. Stan’s blood was a broad irregular stain soaking into the pine floor. The pistol was still on the couch. Stan’s rifle was still broken down in the corner. She walked over and picked up the pieces. With practiced ease she reassembled the rifle and slapped a magazine in. She propped it by the window. She picked up the pistol and checked it. She found the box of shells, reloaded the weapon, and set it back on the couch. She went to the kitchen and got a bucket, a sponge, and soap from under the kitchen counter. She took it back out into the living room and got down on her knees. She looked at the bloodstain soaking its way into her grandmother’s floorboards and shook her head. Her granny had always been a stickler for cleanliness. She began to scrub. She looked up from time to time at the rifle and the pistol. Roy would probably be a while getting back, but she’d be ready.
Keller and Marie didn’t speak until they were approaching the farm. “Laurel’s mother said the road in was about three-quarters of a mile,” Keller said. “I’m going
to go about halfway in, then kill the lights. From there on in we go in slow. I want to get as close to the house as I can. If we have to drag her, I don’t want to have to go too far.” Marie just nodded. Her face in the dashboard light was closed.
“Are you not going to talk to me at all?” Keller asked.
She didn’t look at him. “Let’s just do this, Jack,” she said.
He took the piece of paper from his left hand and handed it to her. “Now that you know where it is,” he said, “you can make the call.”
She shook her head, but pulled out her cell phone. “Janelle,” she said after a moment. “Hey, it’s Marie Jones.” A short pause. “I’m fine, thanks. No… thanks, I appreciate that. Look, Janelle, I haven’t got a lot of time. Who’s duty officer tonight? Okay, let me talk to him, please. You too, hon, and thanks.” There was another, longer pause. Marie continued to stare straight ahead down the darkened road. Then she began speaking again. “Lieutenant, this is Marie Jones. I’ve got a tip. I might know where the people from those shootings are holed up.” There was a brief burst of chatter from the other end. Marie glanced at Keller and smiled sourly. “Yeah, it’s a pretty reliable source.”
“Thanks,” Keller said. She waved him to silence.
“One of the shooters has a place, an abandoned farm where she likes to go. It’s in the county.” The chatter became more animated. “Here’s the directions.” She took the paper and read the directions written there. When she was done, Keller heard the voice on the other end.
Marie took a deep breath before answering. “I’m there now.” The voice rose. Marie looked at Keller again. “I don’t think I can do that, sir,” she said. “My source is there, too. And he’s going in after Laurel Marks.” The voice rose again. “He’s her bail bondsman.” Keller could hear the tone of command in the reply. “I’ll do what I can, sir, but you need to get some units here, ASAP.” She shut the phone. She looked at Keller. “He told me to arrest you if you tried to go in.”
“Well,” Keller said. “You’ve done it before.”
She waved at the road ahead. “Just shut up and drive, Keller.”
They advanced slowly up the dirt road. The darkness above and the underbrush on either side seemed to close in claustrophobically until it felt like they
were being swallowed down the gullet of some huge beast. When the road widened out a little, Keller snapped off the headlights. He sat there for a moment, letting the motor idle while he let his eyes become accustomed to the darkness. Then, when he could begin making out shapes again, he began creeping forward. It seemed to take hours before the oppressive growth on either side gave way. Keller could see the dark gnarled shapes of trees on either side of the dirt road. He caught a glimpse of yellow light ahead and stopped.
“That’s the house,” he said.
“They still have power out here?” Marie wondered. “I thought you said the place was abandoned.”
Keller lowered the driver’s side window and stuck his head out. Over the low rumble of the Crown Vic’s engine, he could make out the higher rattle of a gasoline motor.
“Somebody set up a generator,” he said. “That’s good, it’ll mask our noise.” He switched off the engine. They eased out of the car on either side, closing the doors softly. Keller walked around to the back and carefully opened the trunk.
“You get the vest this time,” he said. “And I’ve got a Beretta stashed here for you.”
“If you would’ve let me know what you were doing,” she said, “I’d have gotten my own. But you’re first through the door. You take it.” He hesitated, then strapped the Kevlar vest on.
They began moving up the road slowly, Keller with his shotgun across his chest at port arms, Marie holding her Beretta down by her side. It was a cool night, but there were still a few crickets singing, the last holdouts against the late-coming winter. As they got closer, the rattle and drone of the generator got louder and drowned out all other sound. Marie stopped and put her hand on Keller’s shoulder. She spoke into his ear.
“There’s no vehicle,” she said. “They couldn’t get out here without wheels.” Keller looked back at her and shrugged. They walked up to the farmhouse. The porch light was on, spreading a fan of golden radiance in front of the house. It looked incongruously homey and welcoming. This time it was Keller who stopped Marie
with a hand on her shoulder. He pointed into the darkness a few feet back from where Marie stood, then pointed at the door. Stay there. Cover the front. He pointed to his own chest, then to his eyes and gestured toward the side of the house. I’ll look around. Marie nodded and stepped back out of the light.
There was a light in the window to the left of the door. The rest of the place was dark. Keller stayed out of the pool of light in front of the window and eased around to the side. What appeared to be another window into the same room shone with light as well. Keller crept up to the window and peered in.
Laurel Marks was on her hands and knees on the floor. She appeared to be scrubbing the floorboards. Kind of late for housework, Keller thought. Then he saw her pick up the sponge and squeeze it into a bucket. The water that flowed from the contorted sponge was tinged with bright red.
Keller pulled back from the window and leaned against the wall. What the hell? he thought. He leaned back around. Laurel had picked up the bucket. It visibly weighed her down, her shoulders slumping as if it weighed a thousand pounds. She was headed for the front door. Keller bolted around the side of the house.
Marie Jones had always prided herself on several things, but one in particular: No matter what she was going through in her personal life, she could always cram that down into the back of her mind and do the job. She had known plenty of officers—most notably her late partner Eddie Wesson—who seemed to bring their bad moods to work with them. But through her divorce, the constant battles with her ex over custody and support, whatever, she could always take them off with her civilian clothes when she put on the uniform. Jack Keller, however, had made that difficult. He was in every comer of her life, and it was hard for her to detach. She still felt the roiling of conflicting emotions toward Keller—anger at him, the ever-present fear for him, and yes, still love, after all. So in the back of her mind, there was a feeling of relief when she saw the door of the farmhouse swing open and she found herself responding instinctively, dropping into a combat crouch, her weapon held out in front of her in a twohanded grip. Marie immediately identified the figure silhouetted in the doorway as Laurel Marks. There was something in her hands, and Marie’s finger tightened on the trigger until she saw it was just a
galvanized metal bucket. She relaxed that tiniest fraction on the trigger. Laurel stepped out onto the porch, obviously unaware of any other presence until Marie shouted from the darkness, “POLICE! GET ON THE GROUND!”
Laurel’s face went stupid with shock for a second. Marie seized the moment to yell again, trying to keep the subject shocked and disoriented. “GET ON THE FUCKING GROUND! NOW!” she bellowed. Laurel responded by throwing the contents of the bucket at her. Marie saw something coming through the air at her and her finger tightened again. Water, she thought, before the trigger broke. No target. No target. She was too far away for the splash to reach her and she sidestepped the few drops that made it that far. She was getting ready to shout again when she saw Keller smash into Laurel from the side like a football tackle. She lowered the gun and ran toward the porch.
Sweat ran down Roy’s back as he dug the shovel into the soft ground. The soil here was mostly sand. It was easy to get the shovel in, but once you took a spadeful out, another half a spadeful would sift down into the hole. It made for slow going. Roy glared balefully at the wrapped bundle he had dragged from the van. Fucking kid, he thought. He ought to leave him out here to rot. But he kept digging. The night was still. Roy could just make out the sound of the generator distantly over the sounds of his own heavy breathing and the chuff-swish of the shovel. Then another sound came to him through the cool air. Someone was yelling. He stopped digging and raised his head to listen. Definitely a voice. He couldn’t make out the words or who it was, but the voice sounded angry. Someone was here. Roy dropped the shovel and ran to the van. He took out one of the rifles, checked to see if it was loaded. Then he began jogging toward the house.
Keller knocked Laurel to the rough planking of the porch, his arms wrapped tightly around her waist. She screamed and punched at his head, but he was wrapped too tightly around her and her blows landed harmlessly on his back. He heard Marie’s footsteps pounding up onto the porch. She was shouting commands over Laurel’s screams. Then the screaming stopped and Laurel was whimpering. “Please,” she was saying. “Please don’t shoot me.”
Keller looked up. Marie was standing over, her Beretta inches from Laurel’s face. Laurel was staring at the barrel of the ugly little gun as if hypnotized. Keller released his grip around Laurel’s waist and got to his knees. “Roll over,” he ordered. “On your stomach. Hands behind you.” She complied silently. Keller took the cuffs from his jacket pocket and secured her hands behind her. Marie put her gun away and the two of them helped Laurel stagger to her feet. Laurel got a good look at them for the first time. “Wait a minute,” she said. “You aren’t cops.”
“You’re half right,” Keller said. “You forget your court date, Laurel?”
Laurel gave him a strange half-smile. “Naw,” she said. “I didn’t forget. I just been busy.”
“Yeah, that’s what we hear,” Marie said. “Where are the others?”
Laurel looked around. “What others?”
Keller clouted her on the back of the head, hard.
“Jack,” Marie said. Keller ignored her.
“See, here’s the thing, Laurel,” he said in a conversational tone. “I’m not a cop. And I don’t really give a fuck about Miranda or any of that bullshit. I just need to get you out of here and to a magistrate. If you get banged up a little in the process, the magistrate will understand.” His voice gathered intensity. “And I need to know if there’s anyone around that’ll interfere with that, got it? And if I have to break your fucking jaw to find that out, I’ll fucking do it, so why don’t you tell me where the fuck Randle is, and that fucking kid that’s with you, and we can get this fucking show on the road?” He shouted the last words into her face.
Laurel looked down sullenly. “They’re dead,” she said.
“What do you mean, they’re dead?” Marie said.
“They got in a fight. They killed each other. That’s their blood in there on the floor.”
“Where’s the bodies, then?” Keller said. “You better not be lying to me, Laurel.”
“I took ‘em off in the van,” she said. “I buried ‘em in the woods.” Keller looked at Marie. “Screw it,” he said. He began pushing Laurel ahead of him, down the dirt drive. “We got what we came for.”
“I guess y’all did.” A voice came from the darkness. Warren Shelby stepped into the light. He was holding his own pistol out in front of him.
“Shelby,” Marie said. She lowered her own weapon. “The station called you?”
Keller shook his head. “Too soon,” he said. “He followed us.”
Shelby nodded. He looked at Marie and his face turned sorrowful.
“I’d figured you had better sense than this, Jones,” he said.
“She didn’t—,” Keller began, but Marie cut him off sharply.
“I can handle this, Jack,” she said. She jerked her chin at Keller. “He didn’t tell me about it until after we left your house,” she said.
“Well, at least you didn’t lie to me, then,” Shelby said. “That’s somethin’. But you still should’ve waited for backup.” He looked at Keller. “Where’s your weapon, Jack?”
Keller gestured back toward the house. “Propped up by the porch.” Shelby looked at him. Keller shrugged. “She wasn’t armed, that I could see,” he said.
“Awright,” Shelby said. “I’m takin’ this young lady into custody,” he said. “You step away from her, now.”
“She’s my prisoner, Shelby,” Keller said.
Shelby shook his head. “Most likely you can get the judge to remit the bail. I’ll swear out an affidavit you were the first to apprehend the subject if you want. But I’m a sworn law officer, and you’re not. That does make a difference.”
Keller still hesitated. Shelby let out a deep sigh. “Jack, I’d consider it a shame to arrest a man who’s broken bread at my table,” he said. “But I’ll do it if you force me. We all have a particular sin we wrestle with,” he went on, “and I reckon yours is pride. But don’t let your pride bring you down. Don’t let it get in the way of your good sense.” There was a long, tense moment, then Keller stepped away from Laurel. Shelby nodded.